Obama is buying a US$15 million island mansion with an oceanside view. Is this the behavior of someone who believes in rising sea levels due to global warming?

Europe used to be covered in forests, which feature heavily in their folklore and history. They were all cut down. China and India have been re-greening their land, influenced largely by air pollution of course, yet Europe threatens to sanction Brazil instead of planting their own trees.

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

Hong Wu wrote:Europe used to be covered in forests, which feature heavily in their folklore and history. They were all cut down.

[...]

yet Europe threatens to sanction Brazil instead of planting their own trees.

What is Eco-Imperialism?

Eco-imperialism is a term coined by Paul Driessen to refer to the forceful imposition of Western environmentalist views on developing countries. The degree to which this occurs is a topic of debate, as is whether such imposition would be ethically justifiable. In his book Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death. Paul Driessen argues that like the European imperialists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, today’s eco-imperialists keep developing countries destitute for the benefit of the developed world.

By advocating for the precautionary principle, corporate social responsibility and sustainable development, Driessen claims, environmental groups legitimize their demands on government but often engender poverty and death in the process. Driessen also asserts that environmentalists’ demands can sometimes cause environmental degradation. Driessen’s arguments are similar to those of environmental critic Bjørn Lomborg.

Some commentators maintain that eco-imperialism has a racial dimension, and occurs when environmentalists place the well-being of the environment over the well-being of humans, particularly non-whites, living in developing countries. Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality has argued that European Union restrictions on the use of the pesticide DDT to combat malaria are killing ‘black babies’. Environmental historian Ramachandra Guha has accused ‘authoritarian’ biologists of valuing the protection of endangered species over the well-being of local people in India and other developing countries.

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

Obama is buying a US$15 million island mansion with an oceanside view. Is this the behavior of someone who believes in rising sea levels due to global warming?

Europe used to be covered in forests, which feature heavily in their folklore and history. They were all cut down. China and India have been re-greening their land, influenced largely by air pollution of course, yet Europe threatens to sanction Brazil instead of planting their own trees.

Bolsonaro didn't withdraw from the Paris accord, so I suggest he fulfills Brazil's obligations.

Developing countries have most to lose from global warming, hence they're pretty much all on board. It's asshole Americans who withdrew from the agreement because they think developing countries got a too good deal.

Rugoz wrote:Developing countries have most to lose from global warming, hence they're pretty much all on board. It's asshole Americans who withdrew from the agreement because they think developing countries got a too good deal.

If you are a 3rd world person you do not care about global warming. You are mostly concerned with eating and putting a roof over your head. Global warming is only important for the elite in developed nations. Poor people in 3rd world countries need to burn wood to cook and stay warm at night. And lastly 3rd world nations do not have clean energy technology.

Why Everything They Say About The Amazon, Including That It's The 'Lungs Of The World,' Is WrongMichael Shellenberger

I was curious to hear what one of the world’s leading Amazon forest experts, Dan Nepstad, had to say about the “lungs” claim.

“It’s bullshit,” he said. “There’s no science behind that. The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen but it uses the same amount of oxygen through respiration so it’s a wash.”

Plants use respiration to convert nutrients from the soil into energy. They use photosynthesis to convert light into chemical energy, which can later be used in respiration.

What about The New York Times claim that “If enough rain forest is lost and can’t be restored, the area will become savanna, which doesn’t store as much carbon, meaning a reduction in the planet’s ‘lung capacity’”?

Also not true, said Nepstad, who was a lead author of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. “The Amazon produces a lot of oxygen, but so do soy farms and [cattle] pastures.”

Some people will no doubt wave away the “lungs” myth as nit-picking. The broader point is that there is an increase in fires in Brazil and something should be done about it.

But the “lungs” myth is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider that CNN ran a long segment with the banner, “Fires Burning at Record Rate in Amazon Forest” while a leading climate reporter claimed, “The current fires are without precedent in the past 20,000 years.”

While the number of fires in 2019 is indeed 80% higher than in 2018, it’s just 7% higher than the average over the last 10 years ago, Nepstad said.

One of Brazil’s leading environmental journalists agrees that media coverage of the fires has been misleading. “It was under [Workers Party President] Lula and [Environment Secretary] Marina Silva (2003-2008) that Brazil had the highest incidence of burning,” Leonardo Coutinho told me over email. “But neither Lula nor Marina was accused of putting the Amazon at risk.”

Coutinho’s perspective was shaped by reporting on the ground in the Amazon for Veja, Brazil’s leading news magazine, for nearly a decade. By contrast, many of the correspondents reporting on the fires have been doing so from the cosmopolitan cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which are 2,500 miles and four hours by jet plane away.

“What is happening in the Amazon is not exceptional,” said Coutinho. “Take a look at Google web searches search for ‘Amazon’ and ‘Amazon Forest’ over time. Global public opinion was not as interested in the ‘Amazon tragedy’ when the situation was undeniably worse. The present moment does not justify global hysteria.”

And while fires in Brazil have increased, there is no evidence that Amazon forest fires have.

“What hurts me most is the bare idea of the millions of Notre-Dames, high cathedrals of terrestrial biodiversity, burning to the ground,” a Brazilian journalist wrote in the New York Times.

But the Amazon forest’s high cathedrals aren’t doing that. “I saw the photo Macron and Di Caprio tweeted,” said Nepstad, “but you don’t see forests burning like that in the Amazon.”

Amazon forest fires are hidden by the tree canopy and only increase during drought years. “We don’t know if there are any more forest fires this year than in past years, which tells me there probably isn’t,” Nepstad said. “I’ve been working on studying those fires for 25 years and our [on-the-ground] networks are tracking this.”

What increased by 7% in 2019 are the fires of dry scrub and trees cut down for cattle ranching as a strategy to gain ownership of land.

Against the picture painted of an Amazon forest on the verge of disappearing, a full 80% remains standing. Half of the Amazon is protected against deforestation under federal law.

“Few stories in the first wave of media coverage mentioned the dramatic drop in deforestation in Brazil in the 2000s,” noted former New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, who wrote a 1990 book, The Burning Season, about the Amazon, and is now Founding Director, Initiative on Communication & Sustainability at The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Deforestation declined a whopping 70% from 2004 to 2012. It has risen modestly since then but remains at one-quarter its 2004 peak. And just 3% of the Amazon is suitable for soy farming.

Both Nepstad and Coutinho say the real threat is from accidental forest fires in drought years, which climate change could worsen. “The most serious threat to the Amazon forest is the severe events that make the forests vulnerable to fire. That’s where we can get a downward spiral between fire and drought and more fire.”

Today, 18 - 20% of the Amazon forest remains at risk of being deforested.

“I don’t like the international narrative right now because it’s polarizing and divisive,” said Nepstad. “Bolsonaro has said some ridiculous things and none of them are excusable but there’s also a big consensus against accidental fire and we have to tap into that.”

“Imagine you are told [under the federal Forest Code] that you can only use half of your land and then being told you can only use 20%,” Nepstad said. “There was a bait and switch and the farmers are really frustrated. These are people who love to hunt and fish and be on land and should be allies but we lost them.”

Nepstad said that the restrictions cost farmers $10 billion in foregone profits and forest restoration. “There was an Amazon Fund set up in 2010 with $1 billion from Norwegian and German governments but none of it ever made its way to the large and medium-sized farmers,” says Nepstad.

Both the international pressure and the government’s over-reaction is increasing resentment among the very people in Brazil environmentalists need to win over in order to save the Amazon: forests and ranchers.

“Macron’s tweet had the same impact on Bolsonaro’s base as Hillary calling Trump’s base deplorable,” said Nepstad. “There’s outrage at Macron in Brazil. The Brazilians want to know why California gets all this sympathy for its forest fires and while Brazil gets all this finger-pointing.”

“I don’t mind the media frenzy as long as it leaves something positive,” said Nepstad, but it has instead forced the Brazilian government to over-react. “Sending in the army is not the way to go because it’s not all illegal actors. People forget that there are legitimate reasons for small farmers to use controlled burns to knock back insects and pests.”

The reaction from foreign media, global celebrities, and NGOs in Brazil stems from a romantic anti-capitalism common among urban elites, say Nepstad and Coutinho. “There’s a lot of hatred of agribusiness,” said Nepstad. “I’ve had colleagues say, ‘Soy beans aren’t food.’ I said, ‘What does your kid eat? Milk, chicken, eggs? That’s all soy protein fed to poultry.’”

Others may have political motives. “Brazilian farmers want to extend [the free trade agreement] EU-Mercosur but Macron is inclined to shut it down because the French farm sector doesn’t want more Brazilian food products coming into the country,” Nepstad explained.

Despite climate change, deforestation, and widespread and misleading coverage of the situation, Nepstad hasn’t given up hope. The Amazon emergency should lead the conservation community to repair its relationship with farmers and seek more pragmatic solutions, he said.

“Agribusiness is 25% of Brazil’s GDP and it’s what got the country through the recession,” said Nepstad. “When soy farming comes into a landscape, the number of fires goes down. Little towns get money for schools, GDP rises, and inequality declines. This is not a sector to beat up on, it’s one to find common ground with.”

Nepstad argued that it would be a no-brainer for governments around the world to support Aliança da Terra, a fire detection and prevention network he co-founded which is comprised of 600 volunteers, mostly indigenous people, and farmers.

“For $2 million a year we could control the fires and stop the Amazon die-back,” said Nepstad. “We have 600 people who have received top-notch training by US fire jumpers but now need trucks with the right gear so they can clear fire breaks through the forest and start a backfire to burn up the fuel in the pathway of the fire.”

For such pragmatism to take hold among divergent interests, the news media will need to improve its future coverage of the issue.

“One of the grand challenges facing newsrooms covering complicated emergent, enduring issues like tropical deforestation,” said journalist Revkin, “is finding ways to engage readers without histrionics. The alternative is ever more whiplash journalism — which is the recipe for reader disengagement.”

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

I’m so happy you posted that ^^^ Sivad, because it shows how dishonestly the whole tragedy was framed. And it is a tragedy, but it’s disgusting how it gets politicized. Then everyone wonders why the climate debate isn’t taken seriously

The real problem of humanity is that we have Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology - Edward Wilson

The tragedy is the neoliberal privitizations to big ag and all the people being driven out of their homes and off their land. It's a human tragedy, not an environmental tragedy.

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

Julian658 wrote:If you are a 3rd world person you do not care about global warming. You are mostly concerned with eating and putting a roof over your head. Global warming is only important for the elite in developed nations. Poor people in 3rd world countries need to burn wood to cook and stay warm at night. And lastly 3rd world nations do not have clean energy technology.

Since you care so much about the developing world, I assume you support us giving them free clean energy technology.

————————

@Sivad

I see you are once again supporting neo-liberalism.

And if you think plants use the same amount of oxygen through respiration as they create in photosynthesis, you are wrong.

Pants-of-dog wrote:Since you care so much about the developing world, I assume you support us giving them free clean energy technology.

The use of fossil fuel has created a very green planet due to increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere and not having to cut down trees for energy.

In Africa there are people that still burn wood to stay alive and cook. Asking third world countries to give up fossil fuel is not feasible when they are struggling. A key to leave poverty behind is to get connected to the power grid and it would be inhumane to impose the Western elite view on energy on developing nations. In reality they have other priorities such as housing, schooling, health care, and food.

When all developed countries have clean energy that is cheap we van go ahead and pass that technology on. As of today developed nations still depend on other forms of energy. So we have nothing to give them.

Julian658 wrote:The use of fossil fuel has created a very green planet due to increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere and not having to cut down trees for energy.

No. You already made that claim and then failed to support it.

Nor does this affect whether or not we should export green tech to the developing world for free.

In Africa there are people that still burn wood to stay alive and cook. Asking third world countries to give up fossil fuel is not feasible when they are struggling. A key to leave poverty behind is to get connected to the power grid and it would be inhumane to impose the Western elite view on energy on developing nations. In reality they have other priorities such as housing, schooling, health care, and food.

And that us why we give them the ability to get connected to the power grid for free.

And at the same time, we use the best green tech we have.

When all developed countries have clean energy that is cheap we van go ahead and pass that technology on. As of today developed nations still depend on other forms of energy. So we have nothing to give them.